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What happens in your head at night, new science reveals, is more important than you think I B Y M I C H A E L J . W E I S S ILLUSTRATED BY ANN ELLIOTT CUTTING 93 Our dreams may affect our lives (and vice versa) more than we ever realized, says groundbreaking new research. For 11 years, a 58-year-old anthropologist kept a journal of nearly 5,000 dreams. By analyzing color patterns in the dreams, Arizona-based researcher Robert Hoss could accurately predict certain things about the man’s emotional state. Hoss correctly identified two separate years when the man experienced crises in his life. The anthropologist confirmed that in 1997 he had clashed with a colleague Dare to Dream RD I FEBRUARY 2006 94 over a management issue, and in 2003 he’d had a falling out with a friend that left deep emotional scars. How was Hoss able to gauge the dreamer’s turmoil? “The clues were in the colors,” he says. The anthropol- ogist’s dominant dream hues were reds and blacks, which spiked during difficult times. “Even without knowing the events in his life,” Hoss observes, “we accurately determined the emo- tional states based on those colors in his dreams.” Hoss is among a growing group of researchers who, thanks to cutting- edge medical technology and inno- vative psychological research, are beginning to decipher the secrets hidden in our dreams and the role dreaming plays in our lives. A look at some of their latest discoveries can give us new insights into the language of dreams and help us make the most of our time asleep. Why Do We Dream? Dreams are a way for the subcon- scious to communicate with the con- scious mind. Dreaming of something you’re worried about, researchers say, is the brain’s way of helping you re- hearse for a disaster in case it occurs. Dreaming of a challenge, like giving a presentation at work or playing sports, can enhance your performance. And cognitive neuroscientists have discovered that dreams and the rapid eye movement (REM) that happens while you’re dreaming are linked to our ability to learn and remember. Dreaming is a “mood regulatory system,” says Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, chairman of the psychology department at Rush University Medi- cal Center in Chicago. She’s found that dreams help people work through the day’s emotional quandaries. “It’s like having a built-in therapist,” says Cartwright. While we sleep, dreams compare new emotional experience to old memories, creating plaid-like patterns of old images laid on top of new ones. As she puts it, “You may wake up and think, What was Uncle Harry doing in my dream? I haven’t seen him for 50 years. But the old and new images are emotionally related.” It’s the job of the conscious mind to figure out the relationship. In fact, dream emotions can help real therapists treat patients under- going traumatic life events. In a new study of 30 recently divorced adults, Cartwright tracked their dreams over a five-month period, measuring their feelings toward their ex-spouses. She Dreams help people work through the day’s emotional quandaries. It’s like having a built-in therapist. discovered that those who were an- griest at the spouse while dreaming had the best chance of successfully coping with divorce. “If their dreams were bland,” Cartwright says, “they hadn’t started to work through their emotions and deal with the divorce.” For therapists, this finding will help determine whether divorced men or women need counseling or have already dreamed their troubles away. One Interpretation Doesn’t Fit All No device lets researchers probe the content of dreams while we sleep, but scientists are finding new ways to in- terpret dreams once we’ve awakened. Forget Freud’s notion that dreams con- tain images with universal meanings (e.g., cigar=penis). A new generation of psychologists insists that dream sym- bols differ depending on the dreamer. In a recent study, University of Ottawa psychology professor Joseph De Kon- inck asked 13 volunteers to make two lists: one of details recalled from recent dreams, and another of recent events in their waking lives. When an- alysts were asked to match which vol- unteer experienced which dream, they failed. De Koninck’s conclusion: Each person understands his or her dreams better than anyone else—including tra- ditional psychoanalysts. In a dream, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar—or almost anything else. DARE TO DREAM Your Brain on Dreams A century after Sigmund Freud pioneered the field of dream analysis, scientists are only now decoding the biology of how we manufacture dreams. At the Sleep Neuroimaging Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, re- searcher Eric Nofzinger, MD, delves into the brains of sleeping subjects using PET scans normally employed to detect cancer and other diseases. (The orange color, right, signals brain activ- ity in the cortex.) By injecting subjects with mildly radioactive glucose, he’s traced the source of dreams to the limbic system, a primitive part of the brain that controls emotions. During dreaming, the limbic system explodes like fireworks with neural activity, suffusing our dreams with drama. “That’s why so many dreams are emotional events,” says Nofzinger, “where we’re running from danger or facing an anx- ious situation. The part of the brain that controls dreams also orchestrates our instincts, drives, sexual behavior and fight-or- flight response.” Meanwhile, the frontal lobes of the brain that govern logic disengage, explaining why dreams are often bizarre combinations of events and people. Awake state REM sleep “There’s just no evidence of univer- sal dream symbols,” says De Koninck. “My advice is to throw away your dream dictionary if you really want to interpret your dreams.” Decoding the Meanings Today, psychologists are applying modern technology to probe the con- tent of dreams. Hoss uses a computer- based approach called content analy- sis to interpret the colors in dreams. More than 80 percent of people dream in color, he says, though only a quarter of them recall the shades the next morning. To collect data, he analyzed nearly 24,000 dreams, cat- alogued in two databases at the Uni- versity of California, Santa Cruz, and Bridgewater State College in Massa- RD I FEBRUARY 2006 Upgrade Your Dreams What can you do to recall your dreams more often and interpret them more clearly? The experts offer these tips: Incubate an idea. Before you go to sleep, consciously think about a topic or a person you’d like to dream about. Pose a question that’s troubling you and see how your dream responds to it. Keep track. Next to your bed, place a pad and pen, or a tape recorder or lap- top, to record your dreams as soon as you wake up. Try to awaken naturally, without the help of an alarm clock or barking dog that can disrupt your dream cycle. If your schedule doesn’t allow you to sleep in dur- ing the week, begin your dream journal on a weekend or during a vacation. Wake up slowly. For the first moment after you awaken, lie still and keep your eyes closed, because your dream may be connected to your body position while you slept. Try to recollect the dream and then store it in your memory by giving it a name like “Late for an Exam” or “My Date with Ashley Judd.” When you rise, immediately write down as many images, feelings and impressions as you can. Connect the dots. To better interpret your dreams, try to make connections between your recalled dreams and recent events. Do you recognize people from the present or past? Can you detect any themes from the dream? Look for pat- terns over several dreams that might help explain an individual dream. Change the outcome. If you have recurring nightmares that make it difficult to sleep, try to change the endings. Once you awaken from a bad dream, visualize a change in the action to create a more positive outcome. If you are trapped, try to fly. In your dream, you can do what you want! Be patient. It may take days or weeks before you’re able to recall your dreams in detail, but the experts advise to keep practicing. Dream memories are fragile, and trying to recall all the plot twists and turns on consecutive nights seems to have a cumulative effect. 96 DARE TO DREAM 97 chusetts. His study suggested that specific colors represent particular emotions (for example, red means action, excitement and desire; blue equals calmness, tranquility and harmony; black connotes fear, anxi- ety and intimidation). But, as with symbols and action, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to interpretation. Every dreamer draws on a different palette to reflect per- sonal associations. “Using color is your brain’s way of painting your dreams with your emotion,” says Hoss, who just published his results in Dream Language (Innersource, 2005). Some researchers scoff at the need for computers or even therapists to interpret dreams. Psychologist Gayle Delaney, PhD, founding president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, believes that dream- ers themselves are the best inter- preters of their time in dreamland. She supports a “dream interview” technique, which asks people to an- swer a series of straightforward ques- tions in order to gain insights into their recollections. From her office in San Francisco, Delaney uses this process to help single people analyze and better understand their romantic relationships through their dreams. Delaney tells of one client who dreamed of her new boyfriend swim- ming in the ocean. Above the water, he looked like an adorable seal, but below the water he was a vicious shark. When asked about her boyfriend’s personality, the woman conceded that he had a violent streak—a fact she consciously tried to ignore. “It was clear that this woman had misgivings about a darker side to her boyfriend,” says Delaney. “The dreaming mind is more insight- ful about the people in your life than your waking mind.” The woman broke up with her boyfriend soon afterward. What Dreams Can Do for You Psychologists have long known that people can solve their problems at work and home by “sleeping on it.” The challenge has always been to train yourself to dream up the solutions. Deirdre Barrett, PhD, an assistant psy- chology professor at Harvard Medi- cal School and editor of the journal Dreaming, advises individuals to pon- der questions just before falling asleep (Should I take this job? Should I marry that guy?) and then let the subcon- scious provide the answers. “I’ve More than 80% of people dream in color, and specific colors may represent particular emotions. known artists looking for inspiration who simply dream up a future show of their art and wake up with plenty of new painting ideas,” says Barrett. “More and more people are learning these techniques to control their dreams.” Some researchers believe that you can guide your dreams while you’re sleeping. In recent years, Stephen LaBerge, PhD, has pioneered a way of directing the sleeping mind through “lucid dreaming,” in which a sleeping person realizes he or she is dreaming while it is happening. Lucid dreamers can experience fantasy adventures— like flying to the moon, traveling through time or making love on a beach—while being fully aware that they’re dreaming. “It’s like a poor man’s Tahiti,” says LaBerge, a psy- chophysiologist who directs the Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, Cali- fornia. “Just being in a lucid dream is a turn-on for people.” According to LaBerge, lucid dream- ers can use the experience for a vari- ety of purposes: problem solving, developing creative ideas and heal- ing. Patricia Keelin, a 55-year-old graphic cartographer from northern California, has used lucid dreaming for everything from talking to her long-dead father to gorging on sweets. “Chocolate always tastes better in a lucid dream because you don’t have to worry about the calories,” she says. A weak swimmer in her waking life, she often likes to go skin diving when she realizes she’s having a lucid RD I FEBRUARY 2006 98 Making Peace With Grief Our dreams can help us untangle our emotions about people who are no longer with us, according to psychologist Patricia Garfield, PhD, who’s written nine books on dreams. After her husband of 33 years died in 2002, Garfield developed a theory that grieving people experience “dream seasons” while mourning the loss of loved ones. During the first season, akin to the traditional period of grief, people dream destructive images. “I dreamed of sweeping up shattered glass, like the shatter- ing of a life,” Garfield recalls. Later, in the second dream season, people experi- ence chaotic dreams filled with swirling emotions of sadness and guilt. “People feel isolated in this season,” she says. “Older women get depressed and the sui- cide rate among older men shoots up.” Finally, in the third dream season, individuals transfer their recollections to precious memories, and their dream images turn positive with new life. “I dreamed of babies, reflecting the length of time since my husband died,” says Garfield, who’s interviewing other widows about their dreams for a forthcoming book on the subject. “After three months, I dreamed of looking at an infant in a baby carriage. After six months, I dreamed of an adorable baby sitting up and laughing. Dreams have a special power to help us let go of someone we love.” DARE TO DREAM 99 dream, diving to the bottom of the dream ocean without worrying about breathing (or her swimming skills). “It’s exhilarating,” she says. “Lucid dreaming is great because it’s free and available to everybody.” Well, not entirely free. Although everyone has the potential to dream lucidly, it rarely happens routinely without special training or tempera- ment. The Lucidity Institute operates instructional workshops and retreats to spread the gospel. LaBerge has even developed a $500 device—called the NovaDreamer (novadreamer.com)— which helps individuals become par- ticipants in their dreams. Once the sleep-mask-like device recognizes the wearer is experiencing REM sleep characteristic of dreaming, it emits a flashing red light that is designed to seep into the person’s dream. “It’s like being at the opera and realizing the flashing lights at intermission mean the opera is about to start again,” says LaBerge. “The cue says that you’re dreaming so you can open yourself up to any kind of experience you want. After all, it’s your dream.” Indeed, your dreams are like private movies where you are the star, direc- tor and writer all at once. And as the latest research indicates, you are also the most insightful movie critic— without the need of a couch. The best interpreter of your dreams is you. I T ’ S A C A D E M I C There was a time when college courses had titles like Math 101, English Literature and Introduction to Modern History. Not anymore. Here’s the new curriculum. In Philosophy and Star Trek, Georgetown University students can figure out the trouble with Tribbles as they discuss time travel, whether computers can think, and philosophical dilemmas facing the crew of the starship Enterprise. Discover how Brick really felt when Opal left him for his neighbor’s best friend’s sister in the University of Wisconsin course Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles. Students analyze themes and char- acters and their impact on men’s and women’s roles in real life. Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions So you thought there was nothing more to drinking beer than opening your mouth and guzzling it down? Guess again, says SFGate.com. In Introduction to Beer and Brewing, taught at the University of Cali- fornia, Davis, you’ll learn the art of making your own brew. The term is capped by a beer tasting.